ShmoopTube

00:03

Whatever you may think of the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and [Communist manifesto]

00:07

Friedrich Engels clearly wrote their book hoping that the coming revolution

00:10

would make the world a better place for everyone but whoa, boy.. The revolution

00:16

did not deliver this can be blamed on Vladimir Lenin when civil war raged in

00:22

Russia between 1918 and 1922 Lenin the man in charge used both the Red Guard [The Red Guard group of men]

00:28

and the Cheka or Soviet security police to nip any insurrection in the bud.. It

00:34

didn't matter if you were a member of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat if

00:38

you rebelled you were toast... Take the red terror for example the

00:42

numbers were a bit wobbly here but Lenin basically put the word out that as many

00:45

of his political opponents as possible should be stopped in their tracks

00:49

we know thousands of people died maybe tens of thousands but Lenin didn't care [Dead bodies in a line]

00:53

it didn't matter that he was a stone-cold murdering son of a gun all he

00:58

wanted were people preferably young people because they're easily influenced [Young people saluting Lenin]

01:02

with no moral compass to come and be revolutionaries with him well this was

01:06

never what Marxism was about murdering people who don't agree with you, if

01:10

[Marx beard weeps] beards could weep well Marx's would have and while Mark

01:14

wasn't a huge fan of religion he would never have advocated what Lenin did in

01:18

Russia which was to force the entire country to embrace atheism...oh and Lenin

01:23

murdered thousands of priests and nuns to boot while Marx and Lenin both [Priests walking in the street]

01:27

believed in doing away with a private ownership of farmland and factories

01:30

Lenin didn't believe in sharing with the masses he took possession of Russia's

01:35

agricultural yields for the benefit of the state Marx wasn't a fan of long term [Lenin with a farmer in a crop field]

01:40

dictatorships the first communist country in the world however had two

01:43

dictators for life.... first Vladimir Lenin and then Joseph

01:48

Stalin... Marx had also believed that a good communist should always always

01:52

always put the worker first Lenin however believe that starving workers [Marx clutches face with hand]

01:56

and holding them at gunpoint so they do as he said was the best way to help the

02:00

state finally Marx hated that the capitalist system allowed a few people

02:04

to manipulate the masses for profit Lenin must have missed the lesson that

02:09

day about manipulation because that's exactly what he did with the Russian people... [Russians protesting]

02:13

going so far as to rewrite history so that it was as if his policy failures

02:18

never occurred....Theories don't always translate well to real life Marx and

02:22

Engels would have known this however they would have been horrified to see [Marx and Engels watching soldiers and tanks]

02:26

what Lenin did with their ideas

Full Transcript